


Merry Christmas, Darling

by TheVicarofShipley



Category: Scott & Bailey
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Fluff, Christmas Music, F/F, Fluff, Inspired by Music, Music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 15:11:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17164298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheVicarofShipley/pseuds/TheVicarofShipley
Summary: A Christmas Eve party at Janet's. The gang's all here.





	Merry Christmas, Darling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bluebluebaby](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluebluebaby/gifts).



> Set some Christmas Eve between seasons 4 and 5, after Gill's retirement and before a certain character's untimely passing.
> 
> This was written as a Christmas gift. It was not my pairing of choice, but lord did I have fun imagining it.  
> May have even converted myself to a Gill/Rachel shipper.
> 
> Merry Christmas, darling.

 

* * *

 

 

 

_Bzzzz_

Rachel Bailey’s phone vibrates in her pocket as she hurriedly pulls her hair back and brushes her teeth. She is late for her evening plans. She is already meant to be in the car. Whoever it is can wait.

 

_Bzzzz Bzzzz_

Annoyed, she thrusts her hand in the jacket pocket, pulling out her phone.

 

Rach, I know you haven’t left your flat.

 

“Bitch,” she laughs, a frothy toothbrush hanging out the left side of her mouth.

 

She begins to type a reply as dots appear on Janet’s side of the text.

 

To make amends for your late arrival, I will permit you to run by M&S and grab a bottle or two of orange juice that I forgot to pick up earlier today

 

Rachel moves to type again, but Janet beats her to it.

 

Mimosas

 

Then…

 

Cocktail emoticon kisses

 

Rachel laughs. “Old woman uses text to speech – ‘cocktail emoticon kisses.’” She fires off a thumbs up emoji and resumes grooming, grabbing a mascara so dry she can hear it when she pulls the wand from its tube.

 

_Bzzzz_

 

“Good god, woman. What is it?”

 

And please make an effort. It’s Christmas.

 

“Bitch!”

 

Rachel begins typing, reading aloud to herself with each key stroke.

 

“I’m trying to, you old cow, but you keep texting! And I’m not going to Marks & Spencer for you on any night, you posh bitch...

 

Pausing, she backspaces, changing “posh bitch” to “madwoman,” before continuing…

 

“certainly not Christmas Eve. And if you keep it up you can expect me to bring the half used bottle here, or whatever they have at your corner Esso xxxxxxxxxxxxxx”

 

_Bzzzz  
_

 

thumbs down emoji

 

Janet successfully follows this with a gif from _No Offence_. Joy Freers saying, “You’ve got my heart.”

 

Toothbrush still hanging out of her mouth, Rachel rolls her eyes and replies,

 

“Sainsbury’s it is. See you soon. x”

 

Having donned a bit of sparkle – highlighter swept across her cheekbones, a lippy that makes her mouth look as though she’s already enjoyed a glass or two of red - Rachel grabs her gift for Janet’s White Elephant and heads out the door, bounding down the stairs, and out to her car. She is an hour behind schedule.

 

Scanning the radio, she lands on the chorus of _Merry Christmas, Darling_. She stops the scan and sings along.

 

_“I've just one wish on this Christmas Eve. I wish I were with you. I wish I were with you.”_

The song ends, but it has triggered something in her. _Something heavy?_ _Someone? “Or not? …. Or what?”_  
A station identifier comes on just in time to distract and discourage her from investigating the feeling any further. She hits Scan again and is met with the opening strains of _Happy Xmas_. Raising a swift hand, she turns the radio off completely - “I don’t think so, you abusive bastard,” she says aloud to herself, to Lennon’s ghost, to no one in particular. With that, she pulls on the lot of the Sainsbury’s around the corner from Janet’s.

 

Moving through the bustling store, past clerks still stocking shelves, she reaches the refrigerated aisle only to find an elderly gentleman is positioned precisely where she needs to be, and he looks to have no plans at shifting. A polite smile across her mouth, she stretches past him as he studies the juice labels. She grabs two bottles and heads to the front of the store to join what she imagines will be an interminable queue.

 

Waiting for the self check out, she watches two children screaming and swordfighting with tubes of biscuits. One child hangs from an overfull trolley as one harried adult slowly scans each item.  _I will be here forever_ , Rachel sighs, tugging up her jacket sleeve to check the time.

 

“Happy Christmas, Sergeant.” A voice surprises her from behind.

 

Rachel turns and finds herself stood beside Gill Murray, an elfin grin spread across her gorgeous face.

 

“Gill.” Rachel manages, in disbelief (and suddenly very concerned she didn’t just skip that dry mascara). She feels herself trying to stand taller, straighter.

 

“Getting some last minute Christmas essentials?” Gill nods towards Rachel’s orange juice.

 

“Uh… yes, for…”

 

“Ahem!” An abrasive throat-clearing interrupts them. “Ladies?” A polite, if not perturbed, gentleman bellows. When Rachel and Gill turn, he is pointing, with his carton of orange juice, toward a register that has opened up.

 

“Ooh!!” Gill cheeps, then offers an embarrassed apology. Taking Rachel’s arm, she leads her to the open register. “I guess we were… holding up the queue.”

 

Rachel is in a quiet shock. She can feel herself pulling her shoulders back and down, _what am I doing?_  
She hasn’t seen Gill in ages. And seeing her, seeing her here, like this.  
Gill so…. Gill. Self possessed and gorgeous and… Gill.  
Rachel feels herself unraveling.

 

Gill rings up her own bottles - sparkling cider, ginger ale, club soda. “Come on, I’ve got you,” she gestures to the bottles in Rachel’s arms, taking them with a wink.

 

_What was that?_

 

“Are you headed to Janet’s?” she asks, taking her receipt from the machine, and collecting their bags.

 

“Yes!” Rachel blurts out, too emphatically.

 

“Let’s take one car, fewer to park at the house. Leave yours?” Gill asks, but really decides.

 

Rachel’s mind reels as she follows Gill out through Sainsbury’s sliding doors.  

 

_Did Janet plan this?_

Rachel had only ever confided in Janet her feelings for Gill, feelings that Rachel had tried to bury.  
Once Gill retired, once Rachel went to London, once she wasn’t sharing space with Gill every damn day, Rachel had hoped, believed,  
hoped those feelings would fade. _Yes?_  
After all, it would never work between them. Gill was… straight. _Maybe?_  
And, even if she was interested in women, Gill was... a woman. A _grown_ woman _._  
She was out of Rachel’s league. She and Rachel were at different places in their lives.  
Gill had her life together, a life that didn’t include Rachel.

 

Gill strides through the packed car park with Rachel lagging behind, furiously trying to get her phone to recognize her thumb print. “Janet Scott, I’m going to murder you as soon as I can get in this phone.”

 

“I’m here.” Gill calls from a dozen paces ahead, astride her sedan.

 

“Oh, I need to grab my gift for the White Elephant.” Rachel remembers.

 

Gill cocks an eyebrow, “Rachel Bailey, how festive of you.” Smiling, she tosses their bags into the backseat. “Go on, then,” she says, ducking into the car.

 

Making her way through the parking lot, Rachel fires off a text to Janet.

 

Any idea how I just ended up carpooling to yours with Gill?

 

Without waiting for a response, she thrusts the phone back in her pocket, retrieves her gift, and heads back to Gill’s. A few car lengths away, she slows her pace and takes a deep breath. She pauses just outside the car for a millisecond to center herself. When she tries the car door handle, it’s locked.

 

Leaning down, she raps on the window. Having been deeply engrossed in her phone, Gill looks up, puzzled.

 

_It’s locked._ Rachel mouths.

 

“Oh!”

 

Unbuckling, Gill leans across the passenger seat and pulls the latch, smiling up at Rachel when she does, and fully taking Rachel’s breath away in the process.

__  
That one deep breath, that one piss-poor attempt at centering yourself. You’re fucked.  
Rachel hears a phantom peel of Janet’s laughter, and it makes Rachel want to phantom strangle her.  
She gets in the car and checks her phone. No new messages.

 

Leaning into her headrest, she tries to quietly compose herself as Gill wraps up the business on her phone.  
_Retirement looks really… really… really very good on her. Goddamn it._ Another deep breath, and she holds it.

 

“All right, then!” Gill exclaims, breaking the silence and flinging her phone into the center console. She turns her attention to Rachel. “Ready to get out of here?”

 

Rachel tries to mirror Gill’s beaming face. “Ready.”  
  


When the car starts, the radio comes to life with _Christmas is All Around Us_ – the “hit song” from Bill Nighy’s Billy Mack character in _Love Actually_.  
The sheer volume of the stereo and the realization that this ridiculous fake song is playing on real radio hits Gill and Rachel simultaneously. They look at one another and crack up as Gill puts the car in gear.

 

_“I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes – feel it in my toesssssssss”_

They sing along, laughing at the absurdity of it, for the few blocks to Janet’s.

 

Arriving at the house, they take a suspiciously available parking spot right in front.  
Rachel takes one more look at her phone. No new messages.  
She shoots a wary look at Janet’s front door as Gill leans into the backseat, gathering their gifts and bottles.

 

As they walk to the front door, Gill leading, you can hear raucous laughter, chatter, and, above it all, _Christmas is All Around Us_ , right where the radio had left off, blasting from behind the windows. Gill spins on her heel, an incredulous “ _d’you hear that_?” on her lips.

  
Rachel laughs as Gill scurries up the front steps, police-knocking on the door. “Open up, you!”

 

When Janet swings the door open, she is backlit like an angel - warmth and light, and joyful noise pouring out onto the street from behind her.

 

“They’re here! FINALLY.” Janet exclaims with feigned annoyance, wrapping Gill in an enormous embrace.

 

“We’re here!”

 

_We’re. We are. We. Are._ Rachel thinks, then overthinks.

 

Pulling Gill into the house, Janet grabs Rachel up in her arms. “Rach!”

 

From over Janet’s shoulder, Rachel watches Gill shake loose from her coat, tossing it over Janet’s banister.

 

“Dorothy!” Gill calls out, taking Janet’s mother, who had been looking back and forth between Gill and Rachel, into her arms. Past them, Rachel spies Julie Dodson by the bar, an ornery smile and up-tilted chin as she catches sight of Gill, then searches over Gill’s shoulder for the other half of Gill’s “we.”  
When her eyes land on Rachel, they go wide and she seems to choke on laughter. She pulls her wife Sharon close, whispering as Sharon slaps at her playfully.

 

“Happy Christmas, Rach.” Janet says, releasing her embrace. “You alright?” Her brow furrows as she watches Rachel scan the room, reviewing the guests in attendance – strangers, colleagues, some waving, some dancing, some laughing, most everyone seemingly unaware of her or otherwise entirely disinterested in her arrival.

 

“Janet… is this a set up?”

 

“Taisie! No champagne.” Janet admonishes a sullen Taisie, then smiles sheepishly at a guest before turning her attention back to Rachel.

 

“I’m sorry, Rach. What are you asking? Is what a set up?” Janet takes Rachel’s coat and gathers Gill’s, tossing them into Dorothy’s room, a pile of coats heaped upon the bed, as Rachel follows her to the kitchen.

 

“Is **this** a set up?” she whispers frantically, pointing at herself and then generally into the vicinity of Gill in the next room.

 

Relieving Rachel of her bags of beverages, Janet uncorks a bottle of white to top off her drink before grabbing a fresh glass for Rachel. “I don’t know what you man. Do you want red?”

 

“Happy Christmas, Rachel.” Julie Dodson sings, sauntering up to Janet and Rachel, getting a refill of her own glass of white in the process.

 

“Happy Christmas, ma’am.” Rachel replies, worried that Dodson might have overheard, yet pleased to be called by her first name. Julie raises her glass in a silent toast and glides away.

 

“Did you tell Gill to meet me at Sainsbury’s?” Rachel sputters, breathless and low, riddled with anxiety.

 

Janet looks perplexed. “Did _I_ ask  _Gill_ to meet _you_ at a grocery store two blocks from my home?”  
A long moment passes before she realizes Rachel needs to hear an answer. “No.”

 

“But does she _know_? Have you told her? Dodson knows. _Does_ Dodson know? Does _everybody_ know?”

 

Janet raises her eyebrows, then presses the back of her hand to Rachel’s forehead. “No, no fever.”  
She points to Rachel’s wine glass. “Better get that down you, Paranoid Polly.” She moves toward the party, but turns back. “Rach, no one cares about your schoolgirl crush, ya nob.” She punctuates this with a sip of wine and a smile before sailing out of the kitchen.

 

Rachel takes a long swig of wine, rolls her neck, puts her shoulders back, and enters the party.

 

An hour passes. Two.  
Music blares, drinks upon drinks are poured, plates of food are finished and piled into the kitchen sink. More music, more drink.

 

It’s time for the White Elephant, and Janet begins to assemble everyone to announce the rules, count gifts, distribute numbers.

 

When it’s time to draw, Rachel pulls an early number. Soon, she finds herself tearing into a brilliantly wrapped package of salt and pepper shakers in the shape of Scottish Terriers. The shakers have magnetic noses, and they look like they’re kissing. _Wow! Beautiful! Great!_ Rachel smiles comically, dramatically displaying the gift to those participating, as per the rules.

 

On Mitch’s turn, he draws “a boring box of chocolates” – _well, you’re welcome!_   Rachel thinks, having picked out those chocolates and wrapped them herself only hours earlier.

 

For his pick, Lee, who has never played before, goes for the most enormous bag on the table.  _Never choose the biggest present at White Elephant_ , Rachel thinks to herself, as Gill strides up beside her shaking her head, “Rookie mistake picking the biggest bag.”  
Rachel turns and narrows her eyes, _did she hear me?_ But Gill doesn’t even acknowledge her presence.

 

Suddenly, the crowd bursts into laughter. A confused (and disappointed) Lee is holding an outrageously oversized plush bear sporting a “Keep Calm and Stay Reem” Joey Essex t-shirt. Everyone howls as Julie Dodson yells over the crowd, “That’s ours! We brought that!”

 

From across the room, Rachel catches Sharon Dodson pulling an exasperated, weary face, shaking her head at Gill, but Gill is in stitches – Julie, her oldest and dearest friend, and, as it stands, the highest ranking officer at this party is **the** loudest and **the** drunkest person in attendance.  
Gill stifles her laughter just long enough to offer Sharon a nod of understanding and mock pity.

 

On her turn, Julie steals Rachel’s shakers, leaving Rachel to draw again. This time, Rachel opens a potted cactus with a “Caring for your Cactus” manual.  
Again, she displays the gift to the room. _Wow! Beautiful! Great!_

 

“Oooh, Rach!” Janet cackles above the revelry. “A girlfriend!”

 

The entire party, it seems, roars with laughter. Rachel, smiling, tosses Janet a two-fingered salute. 

 

“Prickly? Averse to water? More like a twin!” Mitch shouts from the back of the group as Lee, beside him, sets down his teddy bear and tries to coax the drink from Mitch’s hands.

 

“Ooh. Shots fired, Bailey.” Gill smiles as she lifts a glass to her lips.  
  
Rachel raises the cactus as if to doff a cap to Gill. Even as she finds herself moving to do it, she’s thinking _what are you doing?! Just be normal.  
_Gill laughs bemusedly.

 

Rachel slips into the crowd surrounding and off to the toilet. Leaning over the sink, she looks up at her reflection.   _Idiot!_  
She reenacts the cap doffing gesture, just to confirm for herself how truly stupid she had looked.  _Idiot!! Just get it together._  
She washes her hands and heads back through the party, finding White Elephant has finished - Mitch is sharing his chocolate, another person is fishing around in the tissue paper at the bottom of their gift bag, some people are dancing, some are collecting their coats and bags from Dorothy’s room.

 

Rachel heads to the kitchen and pours herself some sparkling water.

 

“Could I get some of that?”

 

Gill’s voice startles her.

 

They’re alone in the kitchen, and, when Rachel tops her off, they clink glasses. Gill’s gaze is steady as ever, but Rachel is still afraid to meet it - afraid Gill will see, or afraid she will see that Gill already knows.

 

“You know, the Germans say you have to keep eye contact when you clink or it’s seven years of bad shags.”

 

With that, Rachel wills herself to meet Gill’s gaze, and the warm, broad smile spread across Gill’s face suppresses a laugh.

 

Rachel feels a wave of heat come over her. _She knows_.   
Rachel blushes to the tips of her ears.

  
“Oh.” A look of surprise, then recognition, passes across Gill’s face.  
She looks to her glass, to the floor, to the room full of music. Her lips part and her tongue lands firmly in her cheek. Nodding, she raises her eyes to meet Rachel’s.  
“Oh,” she says again.

 

Rachel’s face contorts in devastation. _She hadn’t known. Oh, god, kill me._

 

But Gill stops her, reaching out and laying a hand on Rachel’s bare arm. She closes her eyes and shakes her head no, then yes, then no.  
When she opens her eyes and meets Rachel’s, she clarifies for the both of them.  
“Oh.”  
And Rachel hears it. It’s an _oh_ that goes up at the end, an _oh_ that ends with Gill’s eyes on her mouth.

 

“So, this is love, mmmmhhmm, so this… is love.” Julie Dodson bursts into the kitchen with Janet in tow. “Refills!”

 

Fairytale of New York begins to play in the next room. It is nearly midnight, nearly Christmas. Rachel peers into the main room at a very depleted crowd of guests - people swaying and raising glasses and singing at the tops of their lungs, a pair of strangers drunkenly snogging under mistletoe.

 

“Bailey,” Julie startles Rachel from her thoughts, her however-distant-hopes, of dragging Gill beneath that bough.

 

“Bailey.” Julie tries again, an authoritative, “work” tone this time, her head tilted back as she looks down at Rachel. She is looking very serious.

 

“Ma’am?” Rachel asks nervously, looking between Janet and Gill.

 

Satisfied, Julie starts again, “Bailey …”

 

Janet giggles to Gill, “Juls’ pissed. She and Sharon just watched _Love Actually_ and she’s been doing this to everyone. Everyone! I’m surprised you haven’t gotten it yet.”

 

Gill looks warily at Janet, then Julie.

 

“And Gill…” Julie continues, as an affronted-looking Gill stands a bit straighter.

 

“Let me say, without hope or agenda, just because it’s Christmas and at Christmas you tell the truth…”

 

From the next room, Sharon Dodson hears her wife’s booming tone as she spies Gill and Rachel, its target. Urgently setting down her glass and ending her conversation, she rushes into the kitchen to intervene.

 

“I, we, Sharon and me, and Janet, and…”

 

Sharon slides into her wife as Julie finishes, “really all of us sincerely hope you two finally shag tonight because….”

 

“I think that’s quite enough, love,” Sharon interrupts, relieving Julie of her wine glass. “I am… so sorry,” she whispers to a stunned Gill and Rachel, and a convulsing-with-silent-laughter Janet, as she gathers Julie up and whisks her out of the kitchen in one fell swoop.

 

A moment passes.

 

“I… am… mortified.” Rachel manages, staring into the middle distance.

 

Gill takes another beat of silence, then a long sparkling sip.

 

“Oh, get over yourself, you two,” Janet laughs. “Help me with these stragglers.”

 

No words pass between them.

 

When White Elephant finished, most everyone began to wrap up or disperse. Guests were full of lovely food and drink, good gifts or gag gifts tucked under their arms (or, in Lee’s case, casually sneaked into the backseat of the Dodsons’ unlocked station wagon, lovingly seat-belted into the middle seat).

 

Gill and Rachel silently gather the few remaining guests’ coats as Dorothy pads about collecting empty glasses left on window sills, beside chair legs, even alongside the soap dish in the loo.

 

“You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here!” Janet barks in some flavor of American accent, shepherding the remaining guests into the vestibule as Streisand’s _Jingle Bells?_ plays.

 

“Giddy up!” someone slurs, wrapping their arms about Janet’s neck on their way out the door.

 

“Yes, happy Christmas. Thank you for coming. You’re walking home? Okay, text me when you get there, please!” Janet mothers.

 

Rachel doesn’t recognize any of these people, and, sneaking a glance to her left, it seems Gill doesn’t either, even as she puts people in coats and receives one-armed hugs and pecks on the cheek and earnest well wishes for the Christmas holiday and the year ahead.

 

Suddenly, all the tension goes out of Rachel’s body. _We’re fine,_ she thinks.

 

Then, _We’re. We._ She shakes her head. _We are fine._

 

The last guest crosses the threshold as Gill turns to meet her gaze, making Rachel aware she has been staring.

 

“Yes?” Gill smiles. “May I help you?”   
Rachel feels herself go red again, but this time she won’t break her gaze.

 

“Ta!” Janet calls from the front step one final time. She closes the door and presses her back to it, sliding part way down and mugging a look of cross-eyed comic exhaustion. Getting no response, she uncrosses her eyes.  
As Gill and Rachel come into focus, just stood staring at one another silently in her entryway.

 

“Oh, Jesus Christ, you two. Dodson was right. Get on with it, already.” She laughs and passes by them into the house.

 

_“Greeting cards have all been sent, the Christmas rush is through, …_ ” drifts in from the next room and distracts Rachel as she opens her mouth to speak.

 

Seeing her hesitate, Gill puts a finger to her own mouth. With one hand on the banister to steady herself, she goes up on her toes and plants a warm, confident, facile, gentle kiss on Rachel’s parted lips. When their mouths part, they linger.

 

“Ready to get out of here?”

 

“Ready.”


End file.
